Islam and Human Rights

Human Rights Watch

The new constitution has a provision that makes the state “the protector of religion” and requires it to prohibit “offenses to the sacred.” However, Tunisia should not negate the clear right in article 31 to “freedom of opinion, thought, expression, information and publication.” Article 49 states that authorities may restrict public freedoms only if those restrictions are allowed by law and are “necessary to a civil and democratic state and with the aim of protecting the rights of others….

Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad

With its economy dependent on remittance payments from the Gulf region, Ethiopia has remained mute to the vicious mistreatment of its citizens in Saudi Arabia, which is cynically targeting migrant labourers in order to quell growing unrest among its poor citizens....

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

The Qur’an was revealed at a time, the early seventh century of the Christian era, when the world at large was in a state of Jahiliya - an Arabic word that denotes a state of darkness and gloom (Zulumat) when the notion of universal justice had not evolved, punishments were arbitrary, the common man was bullied, oppressed and exploited, slavery was normative and, women were treated like chattel and brutalized, to cite the major vices of the era. The Qur’an came to bring humanity out of darkness into light (2:257, 14:1, 57:9), and to lift the burden that was on them from before (7:157). Since slavery was at the root of many of societal evils, it had to be eradicated to pave the way for its quantum reforms....

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Muslims must adopt a two-point formula: of education and Sabr, or patience. Education is the source of intellectual awakening and enlightenment. Sabr means realistic planning. When you save yourself from reaction, when you are able to exercise patience in the face of difficult situations, when you are awakened intellectually, you are able to assess the situation objectively, and you can then chalk-out your approach and strategy on positive lines.....

Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud

A worst-case scenario is unfolding in Syria, and Palestinian refugees, particularly in the Yarmouk refugee camp, are paying a heavy price for Syria’s cruelest war. They are starving, although there can be no justification, nor logistical explanation for why they are dying from hunger….

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly

As many as 35,000 displaced persons are now living in the slum areas in Kabul alone. “Conflict affects more Afghans now than at any point in the last decade,” according to Amnesty International's 2012 report, Fleeing War, Finding Misery. “The conflict has intensified in many areas, and fighting has spread to parts of the country previously deemed relatively peaceful. The surge in hostilities has many obvious consequences, among them that families and even entire communities flee their homes in search of greater security….

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Religious ideology is based on the relationship between man and God. On the other hand, the ideology behind present terrorist movements is based on what can be called a ‘man-versus-man’ concept. It is this ‘man-versus-man’ activism that results in violence and terror. Contrary to this, activism based on the relationship between Man and God produces love and peace in society. This is not a passive attitude. Rather, it is activism in the complete sense of the word…..

Ralph Seccombe

Silently hanging over our civilised debate was violence like the murder of Theo van Gogh, maker of the film Submission, and the attack on schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai. Salman Rushdie, on whom a mortal fatwa was imposed in 1989, was mentioned in the introduction by the chair, Simon Longstaff. Badar queried whether the Western world was really in a position to lecture others about violence, citing the killing of little girls in Afghanistan by drones bombing their homes on top of them…..

Nasir Saeed

Nasir Saeed

Federal Shariat Court (FSC) ordered the Pakistan government to remove the option of life imprisonment for blasphemy. This means that crimes of blasphemy will be punished exclusively by the death sentence. The court, which has the power to determine whether any law is un-Islamic, reasons that any punishment other than death for blasphemy is not lawful....

Rami G. Khouri

Rami G. Khouri

Every other democratic practice in society – free media, voting, civil society activism – relies on the foundation of freedom of expression. One of the reasons the Arab world has endured a steady cycle of public incompetence, corruption, waste and stagnation since the 1950s is that it has denied itself the power and creativity of its several hundred million citizens…..

I.A. Rehman

I.A. Rehman

PAKISTAN continues to offer evidence of its lack of respect for the rights of religious minorities. This approach has been inviting censure at international forums. A fortnight ago, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning Pakistan for violence against its Christian citizens. While the main provocation was the Sept 22 church massacre in Peshawar, reference was also made to the sack of Lahore’s Joseph Colony. The resolution recalled that the Christians “suffer from prejudice and sporadic bouts of mob violence” and that a “majority of Pakistani Christians lead a precarious existence, often fearful of allegations of blasphemy”.....

Farooq Sulehria

Farooq Sulehria

Families cannot and should not be held responsible for taking care of the old, sick and invalid. It should be the state’s responsibility. Only when the state takes care of its old citizens can the dream of a happy family as a social unit be realised. All else is sheer hypocrisy the ruling elite want the working class and middle class families to practise, so that they can exploit the unpaid labour.....

Human Rights Watch

Despite longstanding reform promises, the government of Saudi Arabia has failed to make substantive changes, Human Rights Watch said. In particular, it should improve its arbitrary criminal justice system, abolish the system of male guardianship over women, and throw out discriminatory aspects of its sponsorship system for foreign workers, which leave workers vulnerable to abuses including forced labor…….

Josef Roy Benedict

In reality however it is freedom of expression and religion that is facing a clear threat from hardliners within the government as well from right wing organisations such as Perkasa. The ‘Allah’ case is just one out of numerous other cases over the last year where we have seen an overzealous regime and their religious apparatus clampdown on various forms of writings, religious beliefs and practices, in violation of their international human rights obligations....

Rashid Samnakay, New Age Islam

Moses and his people, opperesed by the Pharaoh of Egypt tracked to the Levant, ‘the promised land’; and left behind a legacy of oppression and strife till today. The early Muslim too have done their bit to this process. The Americas have seen the largest migration of Europeans in modern history. From religious strife torn Europe, in boat loads. Followed by the conquistadores and colonisers.....

Karima Bennoune

Karima Bennoune

It was Faizan’s second experience of such an attack that year. Some seven months earlier, in April 2008, the restaurant at Rafi Peer’s main offices was blown up, after their International Mystic Music Sufi Festival. The Peerzadas did not surrender then, either: “The next day we had a performance.” This persistence elicited more threats. “They said, ‘You still haven’t learned your lesson.’ I said, ‘Well, I think lessons have to be learned by you.’ ” Nor did the audience give up. “Did people come? Yeah. The restaurant was filled....

Dr Fawad Kaiser

Dr Fawad Kaiser

When it comes to the fight against terrorism, most democratic governments presume that they cannot be effective against the threat unless they sacrifice some of their democratic substance. Constitutional guarantees are believed to impede the implementation of efficient counterterrorism policies and are restricted in order to protect the security of individuals....

Mohammad Ahmad

Undoubtedly the world where its people are not hostages to perceptions and where faiths and ideologies are not prejudged and the human mind is free of bias and takes voluntary and informed action based on knowledge and truth should be the goal. The free will of humans will be exercised only when this happens....

Mirza Abdul Aleem Baig

The Prophet replied: “The nations that lived before you were destroyed by God because they punished the common man for their offenses and let their dignitaries go unpunished for their crimes. I swear by Him Who hold my life in His had that even if Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, had committed this crime, I would have amputated her hand.”….

Human Rights Asia Report

Ahmadis were stopped from offering Friday prayers and police asked them to produce a No Objection Certificate (no such thing exists) for offering prayers. When Ahmadis went to a senior police official for help, he instead instructed Ahmadis not to observe their Friday prayers until he had spoken to the Mullahs, the Muslim fundamentalists. The authorities do not allow Ahmadis to build a place for worship, nor do they allow them to pray at home. This is the freedom to worship – Punjab style....

Aiman Reyaz, New Age Islam

Aiman Reyaz, New Age Islam

The best thing one can say about human rights is the right of humans to live, no other right is bigger or better than the right to life and this is what the Quran emphatically says twice in just one verse: first constructed negatively and then positively, doubly reminding us all, especially the Muslims, that every human life is precious. The Quran says: “If anyone kills any human being (whether Muslim or non-Muslim)- unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land- it would be as if he has killed the whole of humanity. And if anyone saves any human being (whether Muslim or non-Muslim)- it would be as if he has saved the whole of humanity.” (5:32)....

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Profound political and theological differences have divided Muslims from the beginning in the Arabia of the seventh century, leading to civil wars over issues of political power within a few decades of the Prophet's death. What came to be known as Shari'a gradually evolved during the first three centuries of Islam through human interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunna of the Prophet….

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

...the realistic prospects of such constant mediation will depend on the credibility and moral authority of the human rights itself, as reflected in the practice of all states, especially the major powers. If the human rights project is to collapse, I believe, that would be as much the result of the failure of Western major powers to uphold these rights in their own domestic practice and international relations behaviour...

New Age Islam Edit Desk

The document shows that the authorities have ordered the release of such hardened criminals on the condition that they will join the subversive activities in Syria. The practice also constitutes gross violation of Geneva Convention of wartime rights of civilians and prisoners. This could even pave the way for the prosecution of the Saudi government at the International Criminal Court in The Hague....

Researched By Adis Duderija, New Age Islam

-Abu Hanifa and his followers advanced the cause of universal human rights – universally and unconditionally granted to all by birth, on a permanent and equal basis, by virtue of being a human - which cannot be taken away by any authority. Abu Hanifa established an unbreakable relationship between the concept of âdamiyyah (personhood, humanity) and the concept of ‘ismah (inviolability). Based on this relationship, he argued that being a child of Adam or a human, whether Muslim or not, serves as the legal ground for possessing basic rights....